The Hooked Generation (1968)

Afrobeat’s rise to common musical currency has been mercurial during the last 5 years as dance music producers embrace more complex Afro rhythms and original West African pioneers like Fela Kuti and Tony Allen receive their dues. Featuring new hip hop from Ty alongside seminal house beats from Masters At Work and ultra-funky original music from Nigeria and Ghana courtesy of Fela Kuti, highlife God E.T. Mensah and more. 2 CD collection of 29 tracks then hits the groove straight away with Aslhley Beadle’s ‘Afrikans On Marz’ mix of Femi Kuti’s ‘Beng Beng Beng’, next up the classic Dennis Ferrer track ‘Funu’ which then leads us to a nicely different track with Tony Allen’sAfrobeat mix of Gigi’s ‘Gudfella’. So many more I could pick out too including DJ Food ‘Dub Lion’ and Orchestre Poly-Rhythmo De Cotonou Benin’s ‘Houe Towe Houn’. Suffice to say this does the job big time.

The series was revived as "AM Gold" in 1995, with a different cover design (early volumes had an artist's drawing of a pocket transistor radio, with later volumes bearing a "gold record" with the year or era spotlighted emblazoned over the top). The first 20 volumes were re-titled issues of volumes from the former "Super Hits" series with identical track lineups, while new volumes covering the mid- and late-1970s (including individual volumes for each of the years 1974-1979) were included.

The series was revived as "AM Gold" in 1995, with a different cover design (early volumes had an artist's drawing of a pocket transistor radio, with later volumes bearing a "gold record" with the year or era spotlighted emblazoned over the top). The first 20 volumes were re-titled issues of volumes from the former "Super Hits" series with identical track lineups, while new volumes covering the mid- and late-1970s (including individual volumes for each of the years 1974-1979) were included.

Opening with a few bars of Stravinsky to set the adoring crowd on its feet, this once-three-LP set is Yes at their finest. This was, after all, probably the most mainstream act that had even provisional "prog rock" status, and their tunes show it. While "Heart of the Sunrise" may be one of the more modestly titled Yes songs (compare it with "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" or "The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)" or even "Total Mass Retain"), it also bears marks of the band playing at its most frenetic pace around Jon Anderson's soaring near-falsetto. Rick Wakeman's grand synthesizer flashes are more than textural, finding visual meshes aplenty with Roger Dean's cryptic cover art–most of which is shrunken or absent on this two-CD reissue…

Without Alexis Korner, there still might have been a British blues scene in the early 1960s, but chances are that it would have been very different from the one that spawned the Rolling Stones, nurtured the early talents of Eric Clapton, and made it possible for figures such as John Mayall to reach an audience. Born of mixed Turkish/Greek/Austrian descent, Korner spent the first decade of his life in France, Switzerland, and North Africa, and arrived in London in May of 1940, just in time for the German blitz, during which Korner discovered American blues. One of the most vivid memories of his teen years was listening to a record of bluesman Jimmy Yancey during a German air raid. "From then on," he recalled in an interview, "all I wanted to do was play the blues."